It is not known how much of that cargo came from the massive bulk-buying campaign organized and carried out across Canada by affiliates of the United Front Work Department, the overseas propaganda and influence-peddling arm of the Chinese Communist Party.

Terry Glavin comments on the 56 million respirators and masks reportedly shipped to China in the first week of the Wuhan shutdown...Read More

Pasinex Resources CSE:PSE reported its second sale of high-grade zinc material from a mine that doesn’t yet have a maiden resource. Announced August 6, the sale came to 4,760 tonnes (wet weight) of high-grade material with a lot assay of 31.6% zinc from the Pinargozu mine in southern Turkey. The lot represents about 2.9 million pounds of contained zinc. The sale marks the project’s second since December, with both transactions totalling about seven million pounds of contained zinc extracted between late 2014 and early June.

The customer was Pasinex’s 50/50 partner in the Horzum AS joint venture and Turkey’s largest chromite producer, Akmetal AS. After deducting money the JV owes Akmetal, the JV expects a “modest” but undisclosed cash payment.

Although Pasinex anticipates further sales from small-scale production, the company expects to continue its reliance on equity financings this year. In June Pasinex offered a private placement up to $500,000.

Even so, “We are clearly now a producing company,” said president/CEO Steve Williams. “Our path forward is to continue to drill and mine at Pinargozu whilst we look for that bigger resource target. We currently have three drill rigs running and that should continue for the rest of this year and beyond. We will use the surplus cash coming from the mining operations to offset some of these exploration and production expenses.”

The JV has about 60 employees onsite. Product from the underground mine is trucked about 100 kilometres to the city of Adana where it’s crushed, screened and stored. Once a sale has closed, the zinc travels another 80 kilometres to the Mediterranean port of Mersin.

Meanwhile drilling continues. Among high-grade results reported last spring was the project’s best intercept so far: